Month: December 2015

I recently signed up to a trial of NOW TV, it probably has the best film collection of any streaming service in the UK. Unfortunately I did not like the experience at all, and cancelled the month after the trial. My experience is below;

Setting up

Signed up for the trial, doesn’t work in Chrome then doesn’t work in Edge, ok lets use IE11 – ah don’t have silverlight, download, install, ready, crashes.

Not a great start, so installing Firefox I’m able to actually stream content on my laptop finally. The video quality was fine and it streamed well.

Next step, connect it to the TV. – Ok install the app on the WII U – there isn’t one.. Fine, install it on the iPad and plug that into HDMI. Oh HDMI output is disabled from the app.

Forced to plug in my laptop to the TV with HDMI, annoying. At least its simple to select a film and stream, can’t find how to enable subtitles have a google.. NOW TV doesn’t support subtitles. Amazing. I just assumed that everywhere under the sun supports subtitles, its a basic thing I take for granted. Its on their ‘Ideas Board’ people are requesting the ‘Idea’ of supporting subtitles..

Fine anyway. I can stream a film, from a device I don’t want to that’s inconvenient with no subtitles but it works. Until it doesn’t.

Broken

Now I did watch a few films successfully, but out of the blue, and just after the trial had expired and I paid a month of membership. It stops working.

I’m not Mervyn, and I have no idea where that name came from. I replied to the email, also stating this, and giving them my London based IP address, they never replied. Emailed again, never replied. I cancelled my account. I have no way of playing NOW TV on my TV.

Conclusion

NOW TV is shit.

Doesn’t work in Chrome

Doesn’t work in Edge

Crashes IE11

Needs Silverlight

HDMI out on iPad is disabled

No subtitles

Bad support

Doesn’t work. At. All. On my laptop.

Its a million miles away from Netflix in functionality, even if it has a better film catalogue. Its very annoying that NOW TV is considerably worse than illegal alternatives like Popcorn Time. In the future renting a film from Amazon Video will work out better, if they offer it. But it still is hard to legally rent a film.